Creating Kid-Sized Brand Experiences

The summer season is one of the biggest for kid-targeted event campaigns. Marketers are busy rolling out pint-sized mobile tours, street campaigns, local activations, and retail engagements—all created to engage kids and their parents during the hot summer months. The latest kids experiences are fun, educational and interactive. A few examples from across the industry:

Bring the Brand to Life

To gets kids excited for the season two premiere of animated TV series “Doc McStuffins,” Disney Junior launched Doc’s Mobile Clinic, a multi-city interactive clinic traveling in a 27-foot Airstream trailer custom designed to reach kids two to seven years of age about being healthy. The footprint’s five stations included an area for kids to give their toys a “check up” (kids received their own white medical coat and cardboard cutout stethoscope), “Stuffy’s Imagination Playground” filled with large building blocks, “Lenny’s Hydration Station,” to promote the benefits of drinking water, complete with branded water bottle giveaways, “Doc’s Stretch & Flex” fitness area and the “Doc’s Picnic Time” nutrition station. More

Dial It Down for Kids

Microsoft’s motion-based Kinect offering used a cross-country Kinect Experience Tour to connect with two entirely new audiences—non-gamer kids and their moms. Handled by our team here at Sparks, the experience was anchored by a pop-out trailer that took inspiration from modern, prefab-type “homes.” Inside the mobile unit, a 12-by-12 living room-esque environment allowed kids and moms to can engage with the technology via both single and multiplayer games. This project was Xbox’s first stab at trying to connect with kids and moms in a mobile event environment. The key was creating a kid-friendly environment that both the kids and their moms would find inviting—and then giving them access to age-appropriate games and content…all in a fun environment.

Kid-sized Gamification

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of children’s book Goosebumps, Scholastic held an event that had local third grade classes solving challenges as they traveled through a 2,100-square-foot maze made of corn stalks. The event, dubbed Trick or Read!, capitalized on Halloween to promote the importance of reading. The experience began with the author reading a Goosebumps story that contained a call to action to find some missing pumpkins. The kids, divided into four teams each and accompanied by a brand ambassador, participated in 20 challenges within the maze that led to clues that solved the mystery. The challenges varied from the intellectual, such as word scrambles and memory games, to the physical, which involved digging through a mini graveyard or other Goosebumps-inspired places to find clues. The students had to read instructions to progress from one challenge area to the next. More.

Going Hyperlocal

Got Milk? brought to life its breakfast products by targeting children and families during the summer in Houston, Miami and New York City. The brand hosted a series of events for kids enrolled in summer camps at YMCAs in the markets. At each activation, the brand served breakfast at an interactive cereal bar and presented a talk with Olympic athlete and taekwondo world champion Stephen Lopez. After the presentations, each kid received a t-shirt and a temporary tattoo of the campaign’s Breakfast Project logo. The kids also engaged with a milk mustache photo activation. Got Milk? gave each participating YMCA location $5,000 to distribute to low-income families in the area. More than 1,000 kids had a breakfast via the program. More.

Connecting with Schools

Welch’s grape juice partnered with Parent & Child magazine to help 100 schools nationwide grow fruit and vegetable gardens. The bounty from the gardens was to be used as the source of nutritious meals cooked in the schools. Teachers of grades K-8 applied to win one of what were dubbed “harvest grants.” Two schools in each state were selected to receive tools, seeds and “educational materials to be used for a hands-on event experience bringing to life the origins of their food supply.” The schools used the kits to start and grow gardens, understand how the food cycle works and influence others on the importance of growing local and eating healthy. More